Axis of evil: Facing down North Korea--very carefully

August 19, 2003|By Bennett Ramberg. Bennett Ramberg served in the Department of State's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the first Bush administration and is the author of several books on foreign policy and national security.

The talks to eliminate North Korea's nuclear arsenal that begin later this month are unlikely to come to a conclusion anytime soon. History tells us that Pyongyang will be a very difficult negotiating partner, unlikely to easily concede the nuclear crutch which, it believes, guarantees its security.

Indeed, North Korea may seek to prolong the negotiations to give it additional time to manufacture yet more nuclear weapons.

This will confront Washington with a difficult choice: continue to negotiate or initiate more stringent sanctions to force the North to heel. Indeed, the Bush administration already laid the groundwork for this next step with President Bush's May 31 announcement in Krakow, Poland, that the U.S.would mobilize countries to take part in the Proliferation Security Initiative to "interdict" shipments of weapons of mass destruction, and related "equipment and technologies."

In addition to the U.S. , 10 countries have signed on. The non-proliferation partners will meet for a third time in September to finalize plans.

Pyongyang could respond by taking actions of its own. There has been chatter that the North might, in the near future, test a nuclear weapon. Or it could announce termination of the Korean armistice to press South Korea to make the U.S. more malleable.

Such jockeying would mark the beginning of the first acute nuclear crisis of the 21st Century. The adversaries would be engaged in a game of chicken, each testing the mettle of the other. We sawthis before, during the Cuban missile crisis, when the U.S.used a naval blockade and its cocked nuclear capacity to bet that Moscow would back down and remove its nuclear-capable missiles from the island. The Russians blinked and the U.S. got its way. The U.S. prevailedbecause the balance of interests and its military capacity favored it.

Nuclear chicken played out with different degrees of intensity during the Berlin and Taiwan Straits crises, and the Korean and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.

In each case, Washington triumphed. But in the current North Korean case the stakes are different. Now we have two countries that both believe they are in mortal danger. Post Sept. 11, America cannot risk the possibility that North Korea will export nuclear weapons or materials to terrorists or other rogue states. Pyongyang's cultist regime, bereft of allies with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a tepid China , confronts a U.S. that already eliminated one member of the "axis of evil." It does not want to be next--and nuclear weapons provide that insurance.

Confounding the dispute is the character of the reclusive Kim Jong Il. The North Korean president may suffer from what Rand Corp. researcher David Ronfeldt some years ago called the "hubris nemesis complex," a pretense of arrogant godliness coupled to a desire to confront and punish an adversary. In Kim's case we have a leader who couples his lineage to his deified father with a desire to taunt the U.S. to show his prowess. Leaders of this sort do not respond prudently to high risks. Rather, crises energize them to take on more. Although not incorrigible or suicidal, their hubris prevents them from understanding the jeopardy in which they have placed themselves. Saddam Hussein's behavior before the 1991 war and the recent war furnishes other examples.

Such leaders see negotiations as an opportunity to "pocket" benefits provided by others who seek to buy goodwill. As a result, it is not surprising that the 1994 Agreed Framework failed. Kim took the economic assistance and continued to violate the obligation to halt his nuclear program. He may hope for more in the current talks.

But by now, economic incentives have become academic: The opportunity to eliminate the North nuclear program has been closed by Kim's diversion of sufficient material to make more bombs. Save for occupation of the country--which will require a war--no inspection system will uncover the entire nuclear enterprise, and no Israeli-like military strike can defeat what it cannot find.

This leaves interdiction of North Korean commerce under the Proliferation Security Initiative as the default policy. It is an imperfect remedy at best, which would be better legitimized by a difficult-to-get UN Security Council resolution. While Washington and its allies will be able to intercept North Korean ships--as Taiwan recently did--sealing the Chinese border and aircraft interdiction will be far more challenging. However, given the risk that North Korea could export nuclear-weapons-useable material to other rogue states and terrorists, it is the best option available if negotiations stall. Pyongyang, no doubt, will respond with rhetorical bombast. But, practically, there will be little the North can do considering that the country itself is a hostage to American military might and Kim and his fellow cultists want, ultimately, to survive.